China’s race to harness fusion energy is no longer confined to a single experimental reactor. Its so‑called “artificial sun” has shattered long‑standing performance limits, while a vast new laser complex under construction hints at a second, more secretive path to star power. Together, these projects could reshape the global contest over who controls the next era of clean, high density energy.
I see a strategic pattern emerging: China is pairing record breaking magnetic confinement experiments with an ambitious laser fusion facility, betting that at least one of these routes will deliver a commercial scale breakthrough. The stakes are enormous, from climate targets to industrial competitiveness and even nuclear weapons stewardship.
From record heat to record time inside China’s tokamak
China’s Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak, better known as EAST, has become the flagship of this strategy. The device is a doughnut shaped magnetic bottle that uses powerful fields to corral a superheated plasma, a configuration that fusion scientists describe as a tokamak. By steadily pushing how hot and how long that plasma can be held, EAST has turned what was once a theoretical “artificial sun” into a laboratory that behaves more and more like a real stellar furnace.
The EAST team has notched a series of milestones that illustrate this climb. Earlier work kept the plasma at 120 m degrees Celsius for 101 seconds, a feat that showed the reactor could sustain extreme heat for more than a fleeting instant and that Chinese scientists could control a plasma far hotter than the core of the real Sun, measured in Celsius for experimental purposes. That record has since been eclipsed by a run in which the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak maintained a high temperature plasma for over 1,000 seconds, a benchmark that analysts now cite as proof that long pulse operation is within reach for future power plants and that the heating systems, including microwave based methods, can operate stably at scale, as highlighted in market research on EAST.
Breaking a fusion limit once thought untouchable
Those incremental gains set the stage for a more dramatic claim: that China’s Artificial Sun has now broken a fusion performance limit that many in the field once treated as effectively impossible. Scientists from the Chinese Academy of Sciences are credited with pushing the device into a regime that earlier models suggested would be unstable, a shift that could enable far higher energy outputs from the same basic machine. Reporting on this advance describes how Scientists working on China’s Artificial Sun have crossed a threshold that had constrained plasma pressure and stability for decades.
What makes this more than a lab curiosity is the way it dovetails with earlier endurance records. The EAST reactor had already surpassed its own previous record of 403 seconds, set in 2023, by holding a high performance plasma for 1,066 seconds, roughly 18 minutes, a run that was widely described as a record breaking achievement. A separate account of that same campaign notes that China’s quest to harness the power of the stars reached a historic milestone when the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak sustained a plasma for 1,066 seconds, giving operators unprecedented flexibility to test different configurations and control schemes inside the Experimental Advanced Superconducting.
How EAST fits into the global fusion race
To understand why these numbers matter, I find it useful to place EAST alongside other flagship projects. In Europe, a coalition of countries is building ITER, a massive tokamak in southern France that is designed to demonstrate net energy gain from fusion reactions using deuterium and tritium fuel. The project’s organizers describe ITER as a collaborative machine that will test technologies, materials and control strategies for future reactors, positioning it as a global benchmark for fusion science. China is a key partner in ITER, yet it is also using EAST as a national platform to trial ideas that could feed into or even leapfrog that international effort.
Technically, EAST is a smaller device than ITER, but it has become a workhorse for advanced plasma scenarios that push the boundaries of what a superconducting tokamak can do. The Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak is documented as a fully superconducting research reactor, with detailed Transcriptions and a Transcript of its Chinese name that underscore its formal status in the national research system. By combining long pulse operation, high temperatures and now a breach of a long standing performance limit, EAST gives China leverage in setting technical standards and training a generation of engineers who will be fluent in the hardware and software of next generation fusion plants.
The rise of the fusion laser in Mianyang
While EAST grabs headlines, a quieter development in southwestern China may prove just as consequential. Satellite imagery and expert analysis indicate that China appears to be building a large laser ignited fusion research center in a southwestern city, with one report emphasizing that Satellite photos show a sprawling complex that analysts link to high energy density physics. A separate assessment describes how an American satellite has revealed that China is constructing what could be the world’s largest nuclear fusion laser, a facility that would use intense beams to compress a target containing hydrogen isotopes to the point of fusion, a process known as inertial confinement, with the report noting that Laser fusion relies on high powered pulses.
More detailed technical commentary identifies the site as an X shaped facility under construction in Mianyang, in Sichuan province, that appears to be a massive laser based fusion factory designed to focus intense energy on a central chamber, a layout that would be consistent with a multi beam inertial confinement system in Mianyang. Another technical note points out that the Mianyang center surpasses the size of the American National Ignition Facility, or NIF, and that its experimental hall could support a wide range of high energy density experiments without resorting to full scale nuclear tests, a comparison that underscores how The Mianyang complex may be designed to outclass the American National Ignition in both size and flexibility.
Why a fusion laser changes the strategic equation
Inertial confinement fusion is not new, but China’s scale of ambition is. Analysts note that using high powered lasers for nuclear research allows scientists to study fusion burn, materials and weapons physics in a controlled environment, and that laser fusion, also called inertial confinement fusion, works by directing intense beams onto a small capsule of fuel, a process that one report summarizes under the heading of Using lasers to compress hydrogen isotopes. Another analysis highlights how Decker Eveleth, an analyst at the US based research organization the CNA Corporation, has been tracking the facility and argues that such a complex could be used both for energy research and for simulating aspects of nuclear detonations in a process called ignition, a dual use potential that raises questions about how Decker Eveleth and others interpret its strategic role.
From an energy perspective, a successful laser fusion program would complement, not replace, tokamaks like EAST. Magnetic confinement devices are better suited to continuous power generation, while laser systems excel at short, intense bursts that can probe the physics of ignition and burn. China’s decision to invest heavily in both suggests a hedging strategy: if one path stalls, the other might still deliver a breakthrough that could upend global energy markets. At the same time, China’s Artificial Sun has already moved one step closer to clean fusion energy by breaking a long standing limit, a development that outside experts, including those at the University of Wisconsin Madison, see as evidence that China is closing the gap with, and in some areas surpassing, Western programs.
Supporting sources: China’s Experimental Advanced.
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